


the best christmas party ever

by Nokomis



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bat Family, Batfamily Feels, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Party, F/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 20:55:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17148938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: “I want you to trick Bruce,” Steph said, beginning with the part she was sure Jason would be on board for.True to character, he perked up. “Trick him how?”“Into having fun for Christmas,” Steph said cheerfully. “I need you to lure him somewhere so we can make him drink hot chocolate and watch Elf and maybe decorate cookies with us.”





	the best christmas party ever

**Author's Note:**

> for enmudecer. <3

So Bruce Wayne was good at extravagant gestures, but quite frankly sucked at organizing a casual, fun family Christmas. Steph tapped on the itinerary that Alfred meticulously kept -- in flowing script in an actual _book_ rather than on one of the many high-tech gadgets that were littered around the manor -- and scowled. There were times blocked out for ‘family Christmas get-together’ but there were sublists of all the activities - from trimming the tree, to eating Christmas dinner -- at precise times.

It was nice that Bruce -- and the driving force behind Bruce, meaning Alfred himself -- was determined to have a structured, traditional holiday, but Steph felt like it was lacking something. It was lacking spontaneity.

“They all need to learn to loosen up,” she told Cass as they were walking through the thrift store. She’d long since given up on trying to find presents for the richest folks she knew at the mall; now they only received the oddest and most hilarious things she could find at the trashiest thrift stores in Gotham. 

So far the best present she had found had been a clearly hand-crafted baby mobile with bats of varying cuteness dangling from it; Damien was absolutely going to hate it. She couldn’t wait to see his face. 

“Not possible,” Cass said, holding up a pair of parachute pants to her midsection. Steph gave her a thumbs up; if anyone could make purple and orange pants work, it was Cass.

“I mean, fair,” Steph said. She set down her basket to dig through a pile of art. Most was clearly done by wine moms on a night out, but near the bottom she found a truly disconcerting portrait of a small dog snarling at a butterfly. It _should_ be cute but instead came across as something that should hang in a haunted mansion, so she decided it was the perfect present for Tim. She pulled it out triumphantly. 

“You’re not going to try another surprise party?” Cass said doubtfully. 

“I know perfectly well that nothing can be a surprise when you involve this much paranoia,” Steph said. Cass quirked her eyebrow at her, but Steph just ignored it and went to check out the selection of giant ‘80s earrings for Babs.

*

“So I have a proposition,” Steph said later that night, perched on the edge of the roof in her Batgirl costume. 

Jason said wearily, “No. Not after last time.”

“Listen, you were only stuck in that vent for twenty minutes,” Steph said, “Not hours, no matter what it felt like.”

Jason scrunched his nose at her. “And if you recall, I said I was never going along with another one of your plans.”

“I caught the bad guys,” Steph pointed out. “With minimal bloodshed, even. A whole passel of drug dealers, caught just like that. And this is totally different.”

“I have my doubts.” Jason crossed his unfairly muscled arms over his chest. Steph could kick so much more ass if her arms were that big. Though then she probably wouldn’t fit in her fave leather jacket anymore, so, probably not in the cards for her.

“I want you to trick Bruce,” she said, beginning with the part she was sure Jason would be on board for.

True to character, he perked up. “Trick him how?”

“Into having fun for Christmas,” Steph said cheerfully. “I need you to lure him somewhere so we can make him drink hot chocolate and watch Elf and maybe decorate cookies with us.”

“That sounds like a nightmare.” Jason’s interest waned as quickly as it had emerged.

“It sounds like you haven’t seen Elf,” Steph said accusingly. No one would ever pass on the chance to drink hot chocolate and watch Elf. “We can even stick candy canes _in_ our hot chocolate. With whipped cream! And marshmallows. It’ll be amazing.”

“Wait, you think you can convince Bruce Wayne, who primarily lives off protein bars in the blandest flavor available, to drink hot chocolate with candy canes, whipped cream _and_ marshmallows?”

“You want pictures of it,” Steph said cheerfully. “You knooow it’s a good idea.” She did a little dance around Jason, enjoying how he rolled his eyes at her. She could tell he wasn’t _really_ exasperated. He just needed a good hot chocolate as much as Bruce.

“It does sound great,” Jason admitted. 

“All you have to do is lure Bruce to the party,” Steph said cheerfully. “I figure we’ll have it at your place.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Jason said. “Why not the Manor?”

 

“Because there are too many rooms to escape to at the Manor,” Steph said patiently. “Your crappy apartment has nowhere to hide. It’s perfect.”

“It’s really not--” Jason began, but then Steph darted over to where she’d hidden a canvas bag, which she held out to him. “What’s this?”

“Everything we need for the party,” she said. “Hot cocoa mix, candy canes, marshmallows, Christmas movies, everything.”

Jay looked down at the bag in his hands, bewildered as though no one had ever handed him a bag of Christmas cheer before. “You know Bruce isn’t going to fall for this, right? It’s going to be the surprise birthday party debacle all over again.”

“I don’t need that kind of negativity,” Steph said. “Just get Bruce there, I’ll get everyone else. Oh, and be sure to dress festive!”

She flung her arms around Jason in a quick hug, then fled the rooftop before he could say anything to ruin her plan.

*

Getting Tim to promise to show was much easier -- the promise of hot delicious beverages was clearly a draw, as was the thought of getting to see everyone in the variety of reindeer antlers, Santa hats, and jingle bells she’d gathered in case anyone chose to ignore the dress code. She had a special sweater monstrosity waiting for Bruce that she had discovered in one of her Christmas-shopping haunts of the thrift store.

Cass agreed to get Dick on board, so Steph thought the logical next step was convincing Babs to come. 

She had assumed it would be simple enough, but Babs was surprising reluctant. “I just don’t think it’s wise to have everyone off-duty at the same time.”

Steph didn’t buy that for a minute. “You just don’t want to go to Jason’s.”

“I mean, I think it’s a questionable choice, if you’re going for a happy holiday get-together,” Babs admitted. “You know it’s going to end badly, right?”

“But it’s not,” Steph said. “That’s the brilliance of it. Jason has to play it cool because he’s in on the plan, and Bruce won’t be able to pretend like Jason’s reluctant to show and doesn’t actually care because Jason’s hosting the thing. The two idiots will have to admit they’re family and they love each other.”

Babs stared. “Are you planning an entire Christmas party just to make Bruce and Jason make nice?”

“Well, it’s something no one’s ever tried,” Steph said. “But no, that’s just a lucky side-effect. The purpose is having a fun night of goodies and Christmas cheer.”

“Don’t think I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Babs said, looking infuriatingly smug. “Ever since the vent thing. You like---”

“Gotta go bye,” Steph interrupted quickly, before Babs could say something that she didn’t need to hear out loud. “Be there or be square.”

She fled out the window, which was one of the best parts of being Batgirl. It opened so many quick exits from awkward conversations.

So the annoying thing was that Babs was almost always right. The vent thing had cause a shift in Steph’s perception of Jason, and she’d thought that she was doing a pretty amazing job of not letting on that she was crushing on him. 

They had somehow always been on the periphery of each other’s orbit within the Bat-family up until Steph -- well, Batgirl, which sounded more professional somehow -- had needed backup on a night when everyone else had been occupied in various out-of-Gotham missions. Babs had sent Jason in after, presumably, threatening him into keeping everything Bat-sanctioned.

She’d sent Jason down what had been marked as a ‘passage’ on the maps Babs had sent to defuse a pipe bomb that had been meant to take out a rival drug cartel, and he’d managed admirably, considering that his shoulders had been too wide to really technically fit in the vent and he’d only barely managed to squiggle, arms forward, to the bomb.

Once it’d been defused, Jason had realized that he was stuck, and had been very vocal about how much it sucked.

Steph had spent nearly an hour carefully cutting the vent away enough that he could escape without falling to the warehouse floor dozens of feet below, spending most of the time trading insults with Jason and admiring the view from behind.

They had gone out for waffles after -- her treat -- and somehow that had turned into a weekly tradition, where they met up, ate junk, and bitched about the people they knew, whether that was fellow Bats or the idiotic things various Gotham villains had pulled in the previous week. They were both considerably more sympathetic to the villain’s existence than other Bats, but simultaneously more judgemental, having lived the life and knowing firsthand how shitty it could be.

She thought she’d been playing it extremely cool, given that it was a monumentally idiotic idea to get involved with Jason, given the amount of history existed between everyone. Cass knew, of course, but Cass was incredibly cool about not teasing about things she knew Steph wasn’t comfortable sharing.

But it had absolutely nothing to do with her Christmas plans. 

If they happened to make Jason happy, and improve his still-tangled relationship with Bruce… well. That was just a happy coincidence.

*

She’d planned her Christmas party for the early afternoon, on a day she’d confirmed in Alfred’s itinerary that Bruce had free, figuring that crime was less likely to disrupt if she planned for peak sunlight hours. Gotham villains tended to adhere to the aesthetic of things pretty heavily, which was something she was going to take advantage of.

She arrived early, armed with cookies and chocolate-drizzled popcorn and ready to party. She’d donned a truly hideous Christmas sweater that featured Santa’s sleigh set against a city skyline with a candy cane signal lighting the sky with an actual blinking light. 

She hadn’t declared an ugly sweater contest, but she was still in it to win it. 

Jason stared at her sweater for a long, horrified moment when he opened his door, then shook his head wordlessly and let her in. She was sad to see that his idea of ‘festive’ meant he was wearing a red t-shirt, and she quickly fixed that problem by carefully placing a pair of jingle bell-festooned antlers on his head. 

Jason didn’t take them off, which she considered a win. She already knew that everyone except Bruce and Damian would show up appropriately attired.

“You know this whole thing isn’t going to work, right?” Jason said, leaning against the doorframe as he watched her pull various sweets and goodies out of her bag. “Bruce won’t show.”

“He’ll show,” Steph said confidently. “Where’s _Elf_?”

“I misplaced it,” he said unrepentantly, then grinned at her in an absolutely devastating way before going over to a bookshelf and picking up a movie, which he tossed at her. She looked at the cover, then grinned. _Die Hard_.

“Not the tone I intended, but we’ll go with it.” 

Jason returned to his spot in the doorframe, leaning against it again with a level of forced casualness that Steph stopped with party prep to actually look at him. He gestured up, and Steph glanced up to see a sprig of mistletoe stuck into the top of the doorframe with a small throwing knife.

She looked at the plant for another moment, then back down at Jason, who raised his eyebrow. “Hey, you said bring the Christmas cheer.”

“That I did,” Steph said, clever retorts and Christmas puns escaping her as she realized that Jason wanted her to kiss him. Right now. In his living room, right before his entire family showed up for a party.

She wasn’t going to punk out, though, so she stepped forward, ready to give him a tiny peck to satisfy the rule of mistletoe.

She had to stand on her tippy-toes -- Jason wasn’t budging an inch, the tall bastard -- and was about give him a peck when she felt his arm wrap securely around her waist, and he gave her a proper Christmas kiss. A Hallmark movie kiss, which was something Steph had not considered Jason capable of, even in her most embarrassing idle thoughts.

Her toes actually curled insider her boots, it was that ridiculous. She never wanted it to end.

When they finally -- reluctantly -- broke apart, Steph said, a little breathlessly, “I think I knocked off your antlers.”

“Guess I don’t have to wear them anymore,” Jason said, though Steph was proud to say that he looked just as dazed as she did. Steph gave as good as she got in all things.

She wasn’t sure what she was going to say next -- she was normally much better at quips, but it had been one helluva kiss -- when she realized someone was knocking on the door. “Better let them in.”

Jason leaned forward, and gave her the quick peck she’d originally planned on giving him. “Just don’t make me buy a dumb seasonal plant to make this happen again.”

“Deal,” Steph said, and went to let Cass in.

Over the next ten minutes, the Batfam tricked in, all -- as she’d predicted, she was awesome -- bedecked in gloriously hideous holiday wear, from ugly sweaters to, in Dick’s case, a pair of National Lampoon’s themed Christmas onesie complete with butt-flap. Even Alfred donned a Santa hat as he looked around Jason’s hastily decorated apartment with a soft smile.

Bruce was the last to arrive, dressed in muted colors and looking genuinely surprised to see everyone gathered.

Steph shoved a fully loaded hot chocolate into his hands before he could make an excuse to flee, and said cheerfully, “Okay, the guest of honor is here! It’s movie time!”

Damian, predictably, found a dozen things to complain about the movie’s action scenes, deeming them unrealistic, which Steph countered with, “I know, isn’t it great?”

It was hard to argue with someone who agreed with you, something which Damian -- who had accepted his own reindeer antlers only when Cass had placed them on his head -- clearly found more frustrating than if Steph had argued with him.

Bruce accepted the hideous sweater she’d found for him with good spirits, and Steph was relatively sure that Babs was sneaking photos of the night to the Justice League, judging by how she kept glancing at her phone and grinning delightedly.

Tim gave her a sideways glance when Jason stole a bite of her snowflake cookie, but after a moment the twist of his mouth disappeared and he gave her a subtle thumbs up, which was definitely something she was going to have to pester him about, because boy did she not expect that.

Everyone stayed through the entire movie, draped over the couch and chair and floor of Jason’s living room. Steph felt warm and content, pressed tight between Jason, who kept brushing the back of his hand against hers, calloused knuckles sending shivers of bright electricity through her body, and Cass, who kept stealing marshmallows out of her mug.

It was the best Christmas she'd ever had.


End file.
